Autoimmune disorders are a significant and widespread medical problem. For example, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease affecting more than two million people in the United States. RA causes chronic inflammation of the joints and typically is a progressive illness that has the potential to cause joint destruction and functional disability. The cause of rheumatoid arthritis is unknown, although genetic predisposition, infectious agents and environmental factors have all been implicated in the etiology of the disease. In active RA, symptoms can include fatigue, lack of appetite, low grade fever, muscle and joint aches and stiffness. Also during disease flare ups, joints frequently become red, swollen, painful and tender, due to inflammation of the synovium. Furthermore, since RA is a systemic disease, inflammation can affect organs and areas of the body other than the joints, including glands of the eyes and mouth, the lung lining, the pericardium, and blood vessels.
Traditional treatments for the management of RA and other autoimmune disorders include fast acting “first line drugs” and slower acting “second line drugs.” The first line drugs reduce pain and inflammation. Example of such first line drugs include aspirin, naproxen, ibuprofen, etodolac and other non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), as well as corticosteroids, given orally or injected directly into tissues and joints. The second line drugs promote disease remission and prevent progressive joint destruction and are also referred to as disease-modifying anti-rheumatic drugs or DMARDs. Examples of second line drugs include gold, hydrochloroquine, azulfidine and immunosuppressive agents, such as methotrexate, azathioprine, cyclophosphamide, chlorambucil and cyclosporine. Many of these drugs, however, can have detrimental side-effects. Thus, additional therapies for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders have been sought.
Tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) is a cytokine produced by numerous cell types, including monocytes and macrophages, that was originally identified based on its ability to induce the necrosis of certain mouse tumors. Subsequently, a factor termed cachectin, associated with cachexia, was shown to be identical to TNF-α. TNF-α has been implicated in the pathophysiology of a variety of other human diseases and disorders, including shock, sepsis, infections, autoimmune diseases, RA, Crohn's disease, transplant rejection and graft-versus-host disease.
Because of the harmful role of human TNF-α (hTNF-α) in a variety of human disorders, therapeutic strategies have been designed to inhibit or counteract hTNF-α activity. In particular, antibodies that bind to, and neutralize, hTNF-α have been sought as a means to inhibit hTNF-α activity. Some of the earliest of such antibodies were mouse monoclonal antibodies (mAbs), secreted by hybridomas prepared from lymphocytes of mice immunized with hTNF-α (see, e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 5,231,024 to Moeller et al.). While these mouse anti-hTNF-α antibodies often displayed high affinity for hTNF-α and were able to neutralize hTNF-α activity, their use in vivo has been limited by problems associated with the administration of mouse antibodies to humans, such as a short serum half-life, an inability to trigger certain human effector functions, and elicitation of an unwanted immune response against the mouse antibody in a human (the “human anti-mouse antibody” (HAMA) reaction).
More recently, biological therapies have been applied to the treatment of autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis. For example, four TNFα inhibitors, REMICADE™ (infliximab), a chimeric anti-TNFα mAb, ENBREL™ (etanercept), a TNFR-Ig Fc fusion protein, HUMIRA™ (adalimumab), a human anti-TNFα mAb, and CIMZIA® (certolizumab pegol), a PEGylated Fab fragment, have been approved by the FDA for treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. CIMZIA® is also used for the treatment of moderate to severe Crohn's disease (CD). While such biologic therapies have demonstrated success in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune disorders such as CD, not all subjects treated respond, or respond well, to such therapy. Moreover, administration of TNFα inhibitors can induce an immune response to the drug and lead to the production of autoantibodies such as human anti-chimeric antibodies (HACA), human anti-humanized antibodies (HAHA), and human anti-mouse antibodies (HAMA). Such HACA, HAHA, or HAMA immune responses can be associated with hypersensitive reactions and dramatic changes in pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of the immunotherapeutic TNFα inhibitor that preclude further treatment with the drug. Thus, there is a need in the art for assays to detect the presence of autoantibodies to biologic agents such as anti-TNFα drugs in a patient sample to monitor biologic therapy and to guide treatment decisions. The present invention satisfies this need and provides related advantages as well.